Samsung D830 review

Samsung D830 Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

Reviewed on: 2 November 2006

It appears Samsung is still trying to get in on that Motorola Razr action, and with this ultrathin offering it looks like it's going in the right direction. But is it a case of too thin, too soon?

Design
The Samsung D830 is the company's slimmest clamshell phone to date -- it's noticeably thinner than Motorola's Razr V3, measuring just 10mm in depth. It weighs 91g and feels light, and has a metal and tough plastic casing so it won't shatter if you drop it.

On the top of the front section of the D830 there's a 2-megapixel camera surrounded by a silver border. Underneath this is a small blue OLED screen that displays signal strength, battery life, the time and date, and incoming calls or text messages. The rest of the front section is minimalist, as is the back.

On the right side there's a microSD slot, while on the left there's a dedicated volume rocker and a charging port that doubles up as the headset port.

Opening the D830 can be fiddly at times. The slim nature of the handset makes prising it open like trying to crack a pistachio nut. Once opened, however, there's enough space to manoeuvre. The D830 is 54mm wide, making it easy to hold, and 188mm tall when open, fitting comfortably against the ear and mouth.

Inside, there's a bright 240x320-pixel colour screen at the top that displays 260,000 colours, and at the bottom is a flat alphanumeric keypad.

The keypad, unfortunately, suffers from a serious lack of feedback -- you find yourself having to press the keys rather hard in order to get a response. On a positive note, the lip at the bottom doesn't interfere with you pressing the lower half of the keypad, in the same way as the D900's lip does.

Features
For a range so slim, the Ultra Edition series is feature-packed and the D830 is no exception. There's a 2-megapixel camera that takes still photographs and video. You can adjust the size, quality, white balance and ISO of shots, and even add effects or frames to make things a little more interesting.

After you take a photo you can do basic editing with the image editor and view your pictures on a TV using the TV-out option and an adaptor.

You can listen to music on the music player, which lets you set your songs on shuffle and repeat, and adjust the equaliser. It will support MP3, ACC, ACC+, eAAC+ and WMA files, and there's an expandable microSD slot so you can store all your favourite tracks and pictures.

If you need to browse the Internet you can, using the WAP browser and GPRS connectivity. It's not as fast as a 3G connection, but it will serve to access WAP sites or send MMS messages. There's also an email client, so you can check your POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts on the go.